This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

ID controversy grows in Muslim world

By contrast, Ahmed K. Sultan Salem, a PhD student at Stanford,"sort of" attacks ID at Islam On Line, eventually concluding,

Two arguments can be made. The first is that ID is an impediment to science as it moves from the deficiency of the current hypotheses to a statement that we will never succeed in explaining the phenomenon scientifically. This can be countered by another argument that ID, by showing the inadequateness of current explanations, may help awaken the scientists from their intellectual slumber, something that often takes place given the inertia of the scientific culture (and other cultures). ID can be a motivator for scientists to think outside the box and try to propose alternative hypotheses. It is extremely unlikely that all the scientists will take an ID result and stop hunting for naturalistic explanations. The point is that ID may harm science, but ignoring it may also harm science. After all, everything has its share of merits and demerits.

Um, yeah, but on a scale of one to ten, Ahmed, ... ?

Bill Dembski comments that Salem's piece "is probably the most ambivalent article about ID that I’ve ever read." Maybe a conflict of loyalties?

Meanwhile, Muslim anti-evolutionist Harun Yahya has also attacked the ID advocates, for unrelated reasons. Who said the world was a simple, straightforward place?